News Corp Going Carbon Neutral With Hara

Rupert Murdoch’s got a new partner with a Silicon Valley pedigree to help his company News Corp go carbon neutral by 2010: Hara. The media giant plans to announce on Thursday that’s it’s using Hara’s software to track and reduce energy and carbon emissions.

While we all know News Corp — with its vast network of film studios, TV networks, web sites and newspapers — Hara needs an intro for many. Two-year-old Hara only came out of stealth in May of this year with backing from venture capital firm Kleiner Perkins, and follow-on funding from JAFCO Ventures and Nth Power. Hara’s software-as-a-service product gives companies and municipalities the ability to itemize and track all of the inputs (water, electricity, chemicals) and outputs (the product, greenhouse gases, wastewater) that make up their business processes.

There are so many startups working on carbon management, it can make your head spin (see Verdantix’s report on 22 companies in this space). But Hara has been signing up a string of high-profile customers. Content delivery network Akamai told us recently that it is working with Hara as well, and announced customers include Coca-Cola, and the cities of Palo Alto and San Jose Calif., as well as Aerojet.The Verdantix report also places Hara as the only startup in it’s “leaders” section.

News Corp’s manager of Energy Initiatives, Vijay Sudan, said in the company’s release that News Corp had looked “at numerous solutions,” and chose Hara “due to the intuitive nature as well as the breadth and depth of the Hara solution.” Given the sheer size of News Corp, it’s a very big win for the small and young firm. Back in 2007 Murdoch described the impact of News Corp going carbon neutral as similar to “turning off the electricity in the city of London for five full days.”